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Doctor
Liz has many strings to her bow

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Traditional
fiddle player Liz Doherty has packed an astonishing diversity of musical
activity into her still young life. Paul Dromey finds out just how much.

Liz Doherty is a bundle
of amazing musical energy! Noted exponent of the Donegal and Cape Breton
fiddle styles, member of all female Irish traditional group The Bumble
Bees, Lecturer in Traditional Music at the Music Department of University
College Cork with a Doctorate in Music under her belt: she recently released
her first solo album "Last Orders" and also features on The
Bumble Bees second album "Buzzin'" {Bee Have Records CD001}.
And that's just the start!

"People have
been on to me for years to do a solo album but it's not something I'd
really considered," Liz remarks. "But over the last year and
a half, I've been doing a lot of workshops, mainly in Scotland and England.
The workshops are usually followed by concerts and people would ask me
if I had any CDs. Some years ago, I made a demo in Cape Breton with Ryan
MacNeil. Simon Thoumire heard the demo on a visit to Cork and asked me
if I'd be interested in making an album for his Foot Stompin' label."

"Ryan MacNeil's
piano playing on the album is brilliant and I just love Ian Carr's guitar
accompaniment. It's different and he approaches tunes in a fresh way.
It gives the music a real edge, particularly on the highlands which are
just far out." Gino Lupari of Four Men And A Dog, guitarist Tony
McManus and fiddle player Claire McLaughlin also feature on the album.
Listening to "Last Orders" or to the terrific "Buzzin;",
one is struck by the tremendous joie de vivre in Liz Doherty's playing.
Her boundless curiosity and enthusiasm for the music has led her far beyond
Irish traditional music, to the Cape Breton style she loves so much and
on to a broad appreciation of the traditional music of many countries.

But big trees from
little acorns grow. A remarkable career began in Buncrana, Co Donegal
where Liz grew up. "I'm the eldest of four girls and my mother has
always been big into Irish dancing. As soon as we could walk, we were
sent to dancing classes. Dinny McLaughlin was the dance teacher in the
town. A brilliant fiddle player, he also taught pretty well every traditional
music instrument. Everyone who went to Dinny for dancing wound up learning
music as well. So, we'd trot off for music lessons on Mondays and dancing
lessons on Wednesdays."

"I learned the
tin whistle, moved on to the fiddle, tried the piano accordion for a while,
tried the harp and the piano - basically did the rounds," Liz laughs.
"We were competing and winning in Dance and Group Playing Categories
in the Fleadhs but I never really went down the solo road. That meant
that I knew only ten tunes or so, but I knew them really well. I knew
nothing about the bigger traditional picture. Dinny played with a group
called Aileach and we heard them a few times but that was about it."

McLaughlin's classes
ceased when Liz was 15 and her interest waned. Her real epiphany occurred
during her Leaving Certificate year in 1987. "That summer, I had
a choice of holidaying in either Butlins or going to a Fiddle Week in
Glencolmcille, organised by Cairdeas na bhFeidleiri. The family went to
Butlins while I headed for Glencolmcille. I didn't have a clue about a
Donegal playing tradition, I just knew the Fleadhs. When I heard all these
incredible fiddlers all playing together and the craic and everything
that went with it in Bide's Bar, I decided that, come hell or high water,
I was going to be one of them - even if it took 20 or 30 years.

" Among the stalwart
young musicians present that fateful week were Mairead Ni Mhaonaigh, the
late Frankie Kennedy, Ciaran Tourish, Paul O'Shaughnessy, Seamus Gibson
and Dermod McLaughlin. Liz had already decided to study music at University
College Cork but her eyes were only now opening to the richness and power
of traditional music. "The fact that I played piano for my Entrance
test shows how little regard I had for myself as a traditional player."

Thanks mainly to the
foresight of Micheal O'Suilleabhain, UCC's enlightened policy towards
traditional music and musicians had already attracted many players from
all over the country to study at the College Music Department. Through
the Traditional Ensemble Courses, Liz met other players and joined in
informal music sessions. "At first, I hardly knew any tunes at all,"
she recalls. "But I spent that whole summer in Cork, immediately
after Glencolmciille, playing and devouring music. I was learning about
10 tunes a day."

"I was enjoying
myself hugely, playing in sessions and learning loads of tunes, particularly
from Maria O'Connell. In my second year, concertina player Niall Vallely
from Armagh came down to the College and we began playing Northern tunes
together." That Doherty/Vallely partnership was the beginning of
the group Nomos. By the turn of the nineties, Nomos, with an engine room
comprised of Frank Torpey {bodhran} and Gerry McKee {mando 'cello} were
already beginning to make a name for themselves around the Cork trad session
scene.

Liz graduated first
in her class from the Music Department in 1991, the same year that Nomos
made their first demo album. "I now had a playing career and a B.Mus
and had become a fully-fledged traditional musician but I was unclear
as to what I wanted to do. The obvious thing was to become a teacher but
I'd had enough of exams for a while. I tend to work very hard at anything
I do but eventually get bored and want to move on to something else."

"Obviously I
wanted to do something with my degree but I didn't know what that might
be. One day, I was talking to Micheal O'Suilleabhain and he asked me if
I wanted to do a H Dip or go off and play with the band. I'd been listening
to Cape Breton music for some time and I said that what I'd really like
to do was go and live there for a year. During my third year in college,
I had done a wee Scottish tour with ten other Donegal fiddlers. One night,
we were on stage before Alasdair Fraser. Alasdair played a brilliant set
of Cape Breton tunes and, ever since, I'd been fascinated by that music."

"Back in Cork,
I was telling Micheal O'Suilleabhain about the tour and this amazing music
I'd heard. He was opening his post while we talked and handed me a Natalie
MacMaster tape someone had sent him. John Morris Rankin was playing piano
on it and, again, I 'd never heard anything like that before. Soon, I'd
learned a few tunes which Tommy Hayes heard me play at a College Traditional
Society session. He sent me some Jerry Holland tapes and my interest just
continued to grow from there."

"Anyway, I had
this dream of going to Cape Breton, even though I still knew very little
about it, or even exactly where it was. Micheal suggested that I do an
M.A. on Cape Breton music. It hadn't occurred to me that I could do something
like that. Anyway, I registered as an M.A. student and headed off in April
1992." That M.A. project evolved into a four year PhD on Cape Breton
music. Liz divided her time between field work in Cape Breton, writing
her thesis and playing with Nomos. Things were beginning to take off for
Nomos and their debut CD, "I Won't Be Afraid Any More" was released
in 1994 on Solid Records.

Micheal O'Suilleabhain
left UCC for the University of Limerick in 1994. Mel Mercier took up the
position with responsibility for Ethno Musicology and Irish Traditional
Music. Liz Doherty was offered a part-time position as Lecturer in Irish
Traditional Music on a year-to-year contract. She was now lecturing, studying
for her PhD and playing with Nomos. In her own words: "something
had to give ."

"The thing I
was least happy doing at that stage was playing with Nomos. I didn't feel
that I was playing particularly well and was still unsure whether I wanted
to be an academic or a musician. I still had the mentality that it had
to be one or the other. I loved the whole Cape Breton project and I was
enjoying teaching. I left Nomos in March '95 and other than a regular
Friday session with Derek Hickey at the Lobby Bar in Cork, I devoted my
time to the thesis." Derek Hickey went on to become the regular button
accordion player with De Dannan. By the end of the '95/96 academic year,
Liz had completed her PhD.

"By May, the
thesis was handed in and, as it was exam time in the College, I had 200
scripts on my desk for correction. I had to defend the PhD on a Wednesday,
the exam correction deadline was the Thursday and, on the Monday morning
before these two huge things, I got a telephone call from Bill Whelan
to do "Riverdance", standing in for Eileen Ivers and , starting
on the Thursday." She laughs at the memory now but, incredible as
it seems, managed to complete her work, learn the music, fly out and do
the show for two weeks in Hammersmith. "That was good," she
smiles, "because it threw me back into learning tunes again. That
summer, I went back to Cape Breton for a while and just started getting
out and about and playing again. The following February, I joined The
Bumble Bees."

The wonderful Bumble
Bees (Mary Shannon (banjo, fiddle, and a variety of other stringed instruments),
Laoise Kelly (Irish harp) and Colette O'Leary (button accordion)) had
just released their first album and asked Liz to augment the group, something
which has developed into a permanent membership. "I'm really lucky,"
she reflects. I've realised that it doesn't have to be a choice between
playing and academia. I work three days in the College and I'm really
busy then but it means that I have long weekends to devote to playing
and touring."

She plays and tours
with The Bumble Bees, her Liz Doherty Band, as featured on "Last
Orders" and with an 18 piece Fiddle Ensemble called Fiddlesticks.
"I've always loved the sound of traditional fiddle ensembles, right
back to that first time in Bide's Bar in Glencolmcille. It has an orchestral
power but also a wonderful raw energetic feeling. Being aware that there
were so many good fiddle players in the Music Department, I thought it
might be a good idea to form such a group. I don't get as much time to
play in College sessions as I'd like so I set up a course called Celtic
Fiddle Styles & Repertoires which got them all together."

"One concert
led to another and now the ensemble includes pianos and Cape Breton dancers.
Last May, we recorded an album in the Everyman Palace Theatre Cork. No
audience, just ourselves but the theatre atmosphere was perfect. The album
will be available on Footstompin Records, probably by February 1st."

Liz is also editing
a mammoth work, "The Complete Irish Music Collection of Captain Francis
O'Neill," scheduled for publication within the year. It will contain
over 2,500 of O'Neill's collected tunes, bringing together for the first
time, his four published works in one reference book. She soon discovered
that many of the tunes overlap, from one book to another and even within
the one publication. Over 3,000 tunes in all had to be checked, duplication
discarded, and then indexed according to the Breatnach Index, a system
whereby any tune can be located melodically through an easily accessible
numbers system.

"In 1991, John
Loesberg of Ossian Publications in Cork rang me and asked if I'd be interested
in putting a collection of O'Neill's work together," she explains
rather wryly. "In my naivete, I had no idea of the enormity of the
project and thought it would take a couple of months. But, when I do anything,
I like to do it right and it just got bigger and bigger. As I was doing
millions of other things, it would get shelved from time to time, usually
while others were proofing the work, and then I'd return to it and get
through loads of work. Many people have been involved in indexing, cross-referencing,
typesetting and proofing and we're now nearing publication date."

After finishing the
article and given the amount of musical activity that Liz packed into
such a young life, I thought that mentioning her age would be relevant
- she is 29. As a further postscript I forgot to mention that she was
responsible for bringing over a dozen leading Cape Breton musicians including
Jerry Holland, Buddy and Natalie MacMaster, John Morris Rankin, Tracy
Dares and Dave MacIsaac to Cork for Eigse na Laoi, the UCC Traditional
Music Festival in 1993, out of which an album of wonderful live Cape Breton
music was recorded.